Monica Schipper/FilmMagic(NEW YORK) -- Winona Ryder has gone through a lot in her life, but for the first time, she opened up about a life-altering incident that happened to her as a teenager.

As a junior high school student in Petaluma, Calif., Ryder, who had a short haircut at the time, was bullied by a group of boys who thought she was a boy.

"I remember the halls were empty and these kids started shouting ‘[anti-gay slur]’ and I didn’t think they were talking to me,” the actress told V Magazine. “Walking home after leaving the nurse’s office -- and I’ve never talked about this -- I remember pressing on the bandage because I wanted it to look more dramatic. I had this inner monologue going of Humphrey Bogart, like, ‘being roughed up!’ I was pretending I was in some gangster movie."

"It was oddly my way of dealing with it, because if I didn’t, I probably would have been really scared,” she added.

After the bullying incident, Ryder dropped out of school and was home-schooled, which gave her time to take classes at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. It was there that she was discovered.

“Had I not been homeschooled, I would not have been able to go,” she said. “It’s almost weird fate that it happened that way.”

After the bullying incident, the 42-year-old actress went on to win a Golden Globe in 1994 and has two Oscar nominations under her belt.